DISQUS

AllFacebook: Facebook’s Problem: Not Enough Good Inventory

  • Jamie Scheu · 1 year ago
    The issue of Facebook's inventory is an interesting one, and not a subject I've seen discussed anywhere else. One possible explanation on the Facebook side is that the very News Feed that makes friends' activities and updates so easy to follow could very well be causing a decrease in pages visited -- there's no need to browse your friends' profiles when you can see everything they've done recently at a single glance.

    On the other hand, though, if you're not reaching your daily budget, you could be going overboard on the targeting that the Social Ads platform makes available. If you scale back on your demographic filters and reach a larger audience, you will certainly garner more clicks (and possibly pay less per click at the same time). As long as your ads qualify those clicks (unqualified clicks are just like throwing money away), you'll see an improvement in your campaign's performance.

    I've published some other suggestions I've gathered from a regular use of Social Ads here:

    http://www.scheuguy.com/blog/2008/10/20/maximiz...
  • Jamie Scheu · 1 year ago
    That link got cut, but you can click through on my name and find it. In any case, great reporting Nick.
  • internal and external links · 1 year ago
    Facebook should explicitly mention below ad that if an ad goes to facebook page or app, since clicking wont leave facebook in such cases. I look for some good timepass on facebook, and i wont mind going to a facebook page through an ad. But i hardly click external websites unless it's really that interesting link.

    Also lack of inventory is evident since facebook ads are too repetitive.
  • kskobac · 1 year ago
    I really think the direction of the article is missing a major point. Sites that sell on CPC or CPA metrics don't need more inventory per se, they need to increase response rate through strong relevancy and value proposition to the user. VideoEgg sells on cost-per-engagement, and they see open rates of 1%. Google obviously sells CPC and see CTR rates of over 2%. If facebook wants to cell on CPA (and I think they should), they don't need more inventory, they need to generate higher response rates - a 0.5% CTR on social ads would be, in your equivalent eyes, a 5x increase in enventory, but what it's really doing is better monetizing the huge amount of inventory and ads they're already serving - and proving that they know how to make ads valuable to their users.